Measuring violence: how to measure violence in a victimization survey
From the international experience, Friends of the Chair Group of the Statistic Division and United Nations Regional Commissions, in cooperation with the United Nations Statistical Division (UNSD) and the United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women (UNDAW) and from the UNECE-UNODC Manual on Victimization survey.
Task force on Victimization, 21-22 June 2010
Maria Giuseppina Muratore, ISTAT
1. Introduction
At the aim to endviolence the United Nations General Assembly has urged States to ensure the systematic collection and analysis of data to monitor all forms of violence against women (A/RES/63/155). One of the five key outcomes of the United Nations Secretary-General’s Campaign, “UNITED to End Violence against Women” is the establishment in all countries by 2015 of systems for data collection and analysis (see the Framework for Action adopted by the Campaign). A recommended set of questions used to collect data on the interim indicators can prevent countries from diverging in their application of surveys on violence against women and facilitate international comparability of results.
In response to the General Assembly resolution 61/143, which requested the United Nations Statistical Commission to develop a set of possible indicators on violence against women in order to assist States in assessing the scope, prevalence and incidence of violence against women, the Statistical Commission established a Friends of the Chair group, currently comprising representatives from 15 countries. In its first report to the Statistical Commission, the Friends of the Chair group presented an interim set of statistical indicators for measuring violence against women, as well as a recommendation for developing a set of Guidelines for Producing Statistics on Violence against Women. The Statistical Commission adopted the report and the recommendations and requested the Friends of the Chair (FoC) to continue the work on developing the statistical indicators on violence against women and on writing the guidelines.
2. Which indicators
At the aim to measure the scope, prevalence and incidence of violence against women, the following indicators were defined:
1. Total and age specific rate of women subject to physical violence in the last 12 months by severity of violence, relationship to perpetrator(s) and frequency.
2. Total and age specific rate of women subject to physical violenceduring lifetime by severity of violence, relationship to perpetrator(s) and frequency.
3. Total and age specific rate of women subject to sexual violence in the last 12 months by severity of violence, relationship to perpetrator(s) and frequency.
4. Total and age specific rate of women subject to sexual violence during lifetime by severity of
violence, relationship to perpetrator(s) and frequency.
5. Total and age specific rate of women subject to physical or sexual violence by current or former intimate partner in the last 12 months by severity of violence and frequency.
6. Total and age specific rate of women subject to physical or sexual violence by current or former intimate partner during lifetime by severity of violence and frequency.
The focus is on physical violence and on sexual violence, but more recently the Friend of the Chair Group added an indicator on psychological and economic violence and genital mutilation.
7.Total and age specific rate of women subjected to psychological violence in the past 12 months by the intimate partner
8. Total and age specific rate of women subjected to economic violence in the past 12 months by the intimate partner
9. Total and age specific rate of women subjected to female genital mutilation
In the core indicators, the denominator is the population at risk: females aged 15 years or more. The first four indicators use this total population as denominator, whereas for the indicators on intimate partner violence, the denominator will be all women who have ever been in an ‘intimate partner’ relationship (not only marriage), whether currently or past.
To calculate the above indicators, thescreenings questions must consider separately:
partner and non partners;
rape from other sexual form of violence;
the severity of physical violence;
the life time period and the 12 months period;
the frequency of violence for each type of violence (sexual and physical) and for each perpetrators (partner and non partner)
3. Which Definitions
Physical violence
Physical violence is any act that inflicts physical harm. Physical violence is defined by different behaviours as to be hit, pushed or grabbed or twisted the arm or pulled the hair in a way that hurt or frightened the woman, to be slapped, kicked, bitted or hit with a fist, attempts to strangle or to suffocate the woman, to be burned or scalded on purpose, to use or threaten to use a knife or gun or to be physically abused in any other way not already mentioned. It can be moderate (slapped, pushed…) or severe (kicked, chocked, burnt, used gun…)
Sexual Violence
Sexual violence refers to a number of abusive sexual contact, of forcing engagement in a sexual act and of attempting or completing sexual acts with a woman against her consent. It can be moderate (sexual harassment, sexual assault) or severe (rape).
Partner
The intimate partner concept is not limited to marriage and according to national settings, it has to be defined. Generally it includes any kind of intimate relationship included the engagment.
Non partner
The non partner includes every person (or every man in case of violence against women) that is not a partner, for instance unknowns, acquaintances, friends, colleagues, teachers, relatives, parents …
4. The minimum request for a module
At the aim to measure the scope, prevalence and incidence of violence against women, since the sensitiveness and the complexity of the issue many problems have to be faced, from underestimation and recall problems to the women safety,and the efforts should be higher if data are not collected in a dedicated survey, as underlines in the Manual of Victimization Survey.
The risk to underestimate data if collected within a no specialized survey exists as underlined by several countries, for instanceFrance, Italy, but alsoAustralia. From the Italian experience, the life course rate of rape or attempted rape was 2,9% in Italian safety citizens’ survey (a victimization survey) against the 5% of violence survey (since the age of 16teen).
Then we need of methodological and procedural dedicated tools to guarantee women safety, help women disclosure, have sounded data, first of all we need separate screenings for partner and non partners, attention to wording and questions design.
The main points are:
•the possibility of adding a full instrument to the existing survey and not only a limited number of questions;
•consequent decision regarding which information are the best and the most important;
•how to design the module and the impact on the other survey;
•appropriateness of the topic of the ongoing survey (for example health, victimization, quality of life);
•ensuring that women’s safety is not compromised;
•big attention in creating a good climate interviewer-interviewee, helpful to disclosure.
Regarding the appropriateness of the topic of the ongoing survey, measuring violence in the victimization context survey presents positive aspects and negative ones.
Victimization surveys offer the opportunity to link different topics of the phenomenon, as social decay, own safety perception, public life and social behaviour with sexual harassment and violence, they are not problematic in collecting data on harassment at work and on sexual harassment (verbal harassment, exhibitionism, obscene telephone calls, to be followed), but they are less good for rape and especially for rape in intimate relationship and domestic violence.Due to the context of crime data collection, the risk is underestimation: the perception of the partner is negative, as of a criminal and the victims have to be aware of abuses to disclosure them, and this doesn’t correspond to the abused women perception.
To avoid underestimation the first main essential requirement is that violence and especially domestic violence has to be measured only by using ad hoc questions which describe violent behaviours, without naming the word ’violence’. This approach consists of asking respondents about specific actions instead of simply asking about “violence” or “assaults”, in order to minimize differing interpretations of what constitutes violent behaviour. For exampleStatistics Canada that experienced financial problems and had to stop the dedicated violence survey, has included the topic in the victimization survey still considering and maintaining separated screenings and asking for each of them the essential 10 questions:
“During the past five years, has your partner:
1. threatened you with his/her fist or anything else that could have hurt you?
2. thrown anything at you that could have hurt you?
3. pushed, grabbed or shoved you in a way that could have hurt you?
4. slapped you?
5. kicked, bitten, or hit you with his/her fist?
6. hit you with something that could have hurt you?
7. beaten you?
8. choked you?
9. used or threatened to use a gun or knife on you?
10. forced you into any unwanted sexual activity by threatening you, holding you down, or hurting you in some way?”
Furthermore it is essential to consider at least two screenings, to focus well on different perpetrators and above all on partners, since domestic violence is the most widespread kind of violence. The ideal situation should be to have two screenings forpartners, one for the actual partner and an other for former partners, but due to interview length problemsand the respondent burden it could be acceptable to have one screening on partner (both actual and former partner) andone for non partner (unknowns, acquaintances, friends, colleagues, relatives). Furthermore all international surveys about violence use actually slightly different screenings for partners and non partners (see the UNECE Inventory of Violence and Victimization Survey).
5. The proposed module of the Interregional Development Account Project
The development and testing of a short survey module to measure violence against women is part of a United Nations Development Account project on “enhancing capacities to eradicate violence against women through networking of local knowledge communities”. This project has being implemented by all five United Nations Regional Commissions, in cooperation with the United Nations Statistical Division (UNSD)and the United Nations Division for the Advancement of Women (UNDAW).
To calculate the above indicators on violence, the module development was based on the following criteria:
(i) Allow collection of at least the interim set of approved indicators and required
classifications;
(ii) Building on existing instruments that have been well tested and validated across cultures, questions are very similar to those already tested in the main of countries;
(iii) Enabling comparative results;
(iv) Limiting the questions to an appropriate length for a module that will be attached to
other household surveys.
The module is composed by questions on demographic characteristics of respondent (besides age in particular partnership status and partnership history), questions on partner violence, questions on violence by others, very few questions on violence severity and frequency.
5a. The partner violence
The Partner violence is composed by 2 sets of questions, questions for current or most recent partner and questions for any other previous partner. Physical and sexual violence questions are preceded by questions on controlling behaviour, including one question on economic violence and acts of emotional abuse. Even if it’s very important to have 2 screenings for partners, again to help disclosure and to help women in focus on different situation of their life (Italy, Canadaand other countries have two screenings too), we think that for problems linked to the questionnaire length, it’s possible to use one screening on partner violence.
Psychological violenceis very important in predicting physical violence and it’s very important for policy needs. Furthermore the recommendations of the FoC on violence of the Statistic Division is including it between the indicators.
In the module the measurement of controlling behaviour and the emotional abuse by partner is carried out by the following questions regarding situations of everyday life.
For controlling behaviour:
He tries to keep you from seeing your friends?
He tries to restrict contact with your family of birth?
He insists on knowing where you are at all times?
He ignores you and treats you indifferently?
He gets angry if you speak with another man?
He is often suspicious that you are unfaithful?
He expects you to ask his permission before seeking health care for yourself?
He refuses to give you enough money for household expenses, even when he has money for other things?
For measurement of emotional violence by partner
Insulted you or made you feel bad about yourself?
Belittled or humiliated you in front of other people?
Done things to scare or intimidate you on purpose (e.g. by the way he looked at you, by yelling and smashing things)?
Verbally threatened to hurt you or someone you care about?
In the module the physical violenceby partner screening consider 6 questions, the first two are identified as moderate violence, the others 4 are considered severe violence:
Measurement of physical violence by partner:
Slapped or threw something at that could hurt you?
Pushed or shoved you or pulled your hair?
Hit with his fist or with anything else that could hurt you?
Kicked, dragged or beat you up?
Choked or burnt you on purpose?
Threatened with or actually used a gun, knife or other weapon against you?
Due to the difficulty of awareness regarding sexual violence in a relationship and the peculiarity of the situation and to avoid underestimation, the questions measure not only rape as commonly defined but also sexual intercourse accepted for fear and to be forced to do degrading and humiliating sexual activities.
Measurement of sexual violence by partner
Were you ever forced to have sexual intercourse when you did not want to?
Did you ever have sexual intercourse you did not want because you were afraid of what he might do?
Ever force you to do something sexual that you did not want or that you found degrading or humiliating?
Reference period
For each of the acts of emotional, physical and sexual violence, the questions regard the time of the relationship and they are combined with the last twelve months question in order to give data on past 12 months and on the life time.
Frequency
Since the difficulty of recallingthe precise number of incidents suffered(as reported on the specific literature), the incidence indicators are changed in frequency indicators indicating the overall frequency of violence: one, few, many times. Furthermore to estimates the frequency of violence during the last twelve months a probing question was added to ask those who responded “few” or “many” (e.g. “Can you estimate how often these incidents have happened in the last twelve months?”) and therefore a classification, such as “daily”, “a few times a week”, “once or twice a month”, “less than once a month”, has been defined.
Severity
Defining indicators on severity is not easy, the different faces of violence present different severity definitions and many indicators are then suitable.
The agreement is on the following indicators: for physical violence the nature of the act asked in the screening questions; for both physical or sexual violence the injuries as direct effect of any physical or sexual violence, included miscarriage as direct effect, the self reported impact on physical or mental wellbeing, the fear experienced during the violence incident.
Type of relationship
The type of relationship with former partners (married, living together, engaged), is collected for thepartners who were violent for each set of controlling behaviours, emotional, physical and sexual violence.
In the case there will be only one screening for partners, in the question regarding the type of relationship has to be included also if the partner is an actual or a former partner. For instance:
Could you please tell me about the type of relationship with the partner that did this to you. Was he your actual or ex partner? Were you married with him, living together or were you in a relationship without living together (dating)?IF MORE THAN 2 PREVIOUS PARTNERS VIOLENT, MARK ALL THAT APPLY.
THE OPTION IN ITALICS MAY NOT BE APPROPRIATE FOR ALL COUNTRIES / Actual partner:
MARRIED...... A
LIVING TOGETHER...... B
REGULAR (DATING) PARTNER WITHOUT LIVING TOGETHERC
Ex Partner
MARRIED...... D
LIVING TOGETHER...... E
REGULAR (DATING) PARTNER WITHOUT LIVING TOGETHERF
NO ANSWER...... Z
Lastly, as an indication of the extent of underreported violence,there is a question on hiddenviolence regarding with whom women spoke about violence suffered and between other answer categories there is the police. It could be appropriate to design a specific question regarding the reporting behaviour to the police.
5b. Violence by others than partners
Non partners violence refers only to physical and sexual violence. The screening questions are shorter. To identify the perpetrator a pre-coded list is asked to victims for both sexual and physical violence. The detailed information on violence suffered are only two, on injures and hidden violence. The question on injuries is asked for the most 3 serious perpetrators.
The measurement of physical violence by others than partners regards only one questions plus a probing question:
“Since the age of 15, has anyone ever hit, beaten, kicked or done anything else to hurt you physically? Threw something at you? Pushed you or pulled your hair? Choked or burnt you on purpose? Threatened with or actually used a gun, knife or other weapon against you?”
Probing question “Anyone else?How about a relative? How about someone at school or work? How about a friend or neighbour? A stranger or anyone else?”
The measurement of sexual violence includes two questions, one on rape and one on other forms of sexual violence.
About rape:
Since the age of 15, has anyone ever forced you into sexual intercourse when you did not want to for example by threatening you, holding you down or putting you in a situation that you could not say no. Remember to include people you have known as well as strangers. Please at this point exclude attempts to force you.